High-Beams
Interviews, features, book reviews, and more!
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Interviews, features, book reviews, and more!
The Headlight Review is thrilled to announce that the winner for the 2025 Poetry Chapbook Prize is: Feminine Morbidity by Maya Williams.
The Headlight Review is thrilled to announce that the winner for the 2025 Poetry Chapbook Prize is: Feminine Morbidity by Maya Williams.
The work of literary translators has often gone unrecognized—unless it is a bad translation. According to an article in a University of California Press journal, Global Perspectives, which cited a study of New York Times book reviews between 2008-2021, the portion of translated works as a percent of the US publishing market may have crept up to five percent. [1] This is a pitifully small percentage.
When I wrestle with a first draft of shorter writing—an essay in this case—I take it for a long run. No music, no podcasts, just two hours of nature, water in juice-box-sized bottles, electrolyte gels, and my outline entirely in my head. I have no choice but to write, because I’d rather my thoughts excavate the soil around an essay prompt than draft anxious emails (admittedly, I do take these out for runs, too).
Many think that for an author, getting their book banned is a badge of honor. That their sales will skyrocket with the free publicity. But this is only true for “celebrity” authors, or authors who are already a household name. What about the little guys? Those indie authors or first-time authors who have yet to form a large readership. How does book banning affect them?
A pocket is a useful tool for writing because you can carry a pocketknife in it, which is good for sharpening your pencil. The pencil as a tool for writing has never been topped, as far as I know. It is cheap, and it is readily available. It is portable. It doesn't require Wi-Fi, and it doesn't have a noisy fan. It doesn't ask you to take a moment to fill out a brief survey. It doesn't ask you to like it.
Jesse Graves’s first collection of poetry Tennessee Landscape with Blighted Pine was awarded the 2011 Weatherford Award in Poetry from Berea College, the Book of the Year in Poetry Award from the Appalachian Writers’ Association, and the Thomas and Lillie D. Chaffin Award for Appalachian Writing. More recently, Tennessee Landscape was celebrated with a tenth Anniversary edition, one that included new poems and an introduction from acclaimed poet Matthew Wimberley.
In this conversation, Mona Susan Power talks about her writing career, the power of fiction, and her latest novel A Council of Dolls with Kennesaw State University Professor Miriam Brown Spiers.
Dr. Andrew Plattner sat with author and The Headlight Review 2021 chapbook prize winner, Lisa Alletson, to discuss her new collection, Good Mother Lizard.
On the whole, evocative and daring, an uneasy dance between the sand and the sea, Strange Beach is an ever-transforming shore, a space of encounter between bodies and meaning, between history and the new.
Here you'll find books received for review from a variety of presses.
Mountain Madness by Clinton Crockett Peters is a collection of essays detailing the author’s hiking treks in both Japan, during his tenure as a twenty-something English teacher, and in the United States during his time as an outdoor guide. His essays weave together both the physical details of his outdoor adventures and the emotional reflections and meanings of these experiences more than a decade later.
